


A Beginner's Guide to Having Super Powers

by PardonMyManners



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, But not in the fun way, But not like excessive torture, Darcy Gets Super Powers!, Drama, F/M, Fake Marriage, Lots of Cursing, Romance, Slow Burn, Torture, as much as it pains me, cursing, trying to stay somewhat true to Civil War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-08-14 03:13:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PardonMyManners/pseuds/PardonMyManners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, How Darcy Lewis Becomes a Superhero and Almost Destroys the World (Mostly By Accident).<br/>----<br/>Considering she’d worked for a variety of super-secret agencies over the past five years (first S.H.I.E.L.D, then unofficially the Avengers), Darcy was honestly rather shocked she hadn’t been kidnapped sooner.</p><p>She’d finally managed to take a teensy-weensy vacation (Brisbane, beaches, hot dudes) from babysitting her lovelorn best friend who was buried so deep in Science! Darcy wasn’t sure she’d ever surface again, when apparently her karma caught up with her. She’d barely been in town for two hours when someone yanked her off the street and into a white utility truck. She got FroYo all over her favorite boots, which was just really not cool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Step One: Get Super Powers

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are, post-Civil War, and me with ALLTHE IDEAS and none of the time, but plenty of motivation. Isn't that just the way? I've wanted to write a fic like this pretty much since the first Thor movie came out. I've got ideas, I've got a sporadic knowledge of Marvel comic book characters, and I've got a mean procrastination streak when it comes to doing my homework. Let's see where that takes us, shall we?
> 
> (Some angsty torture scenes, nothing too graphic I don't think, but fair warning.)

* * *

 

Darcy met Captain America once. Briefly.

She and Jane had been awarded the prestigious honor of being escorted around Stark Tower shortly after the fiasco in London, allowing them to admire all of his fancy lab equipment. All of which was definitely part of Stark’s plan to draw Jane over to the Dark Side (“I'll be damned if I let Tony fucking Stark stick his chiseled nose into _my_ research. What the hell does _he_ know about astrophysics?”). Darcy had mostly tagged along to enjoy what was essentially a free vacation.

Distracted by the voice of Stark’s AI (a woman with a thick Irish accent, go figure) Darcy rounded a corner and ran straight into a metric fuckton of muscle. The beautiful thing about superheroes, however, was that they tended to have excellent reflexes. A very handsome man with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a jawline that could likely be seen from space, held her carefully about the waist a mere three inches from the ground.  She vaguely wondered if she’d hit her head. It seemed the only explanation for such an unrealistically attractive human being. After all, Thor was an undeniable hottie, but he was a literal God, so that didn't really count.

“Are you alright, ma’am?” Hottie asked with an adorably concerned furrow in his perfect brow.

Darcy made a sound that was vaguely affirmative and possibly strangled as he helped her upright, watching in fascination as a pinkish flush started at the tips of his ears and spread across his face.

“Jesus, Darcy,” Jane admonished, but Darcy was feeling a bit too drunk on biceps and perfectly formed pectorals to notice really. Tall, broad and _breathtaking_ was still rather close to her, and his eyes performed a very noticeable double-take toward the flattering v-neck of her shirt.

Upon noticing that _Darcy_ had noticed his wandering gaze, the poor fellow lurched away from her with a grumbled apology, suddenly unable to look at her. Tony Stark appeared as though Christmas had come early as a truly evil smile bloomed on his face. With a nod of his head in the direction of Jane and Stark, the poor man immediately took off down the hall.

“Lewis,” Stark anointed the moment he was gone, “anyone who can scandalize the Cap in less than ten seconds and with zero words is a hero in my book.” His overly groomed face was deeply serious.

Darcy floated through the rest of the day (alright, month), bolstered by the knowledge that Captain America had totally scoped out her boobs.

* * *

 

She and Jane were in ButtFuckNowhere, Australia when the Avenger’s split like kids caught in a messy divorce. They were nose deep in some heavily theoretical science (most of which went _way_ over Darcy’s head), meaning there was at least an eighty percent chance something important was going to blow up (probably her). The whole thing felt pretty far removed from her current reality. Frankly, Darcy was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. Signing some binding document drafted by the UN and a bunch of tyrannically capitalist governments, in Darcy’s opinion, was a _huge_ mistake.

“Be nice, Darcy,” Jane instructed absently, as if she hadn’t really been listening but just assumed Darcy was being an asshole. Darcy couldn’t precisely blame her. 

“What! Put an egotistical maniac like Tony Stark and a patriotic-suck up like the good ol’ Cap together and there is _bound_ to be sparks,” Darcy said, addressing the mysterious piece of equipment which concealed most of Jane’s body and appeared to be held together by duct-tape and dreams. Some things never changed. 

Jane peeked around at her, thick goggles giving her a distinct bug-eyed effect, and said, “I’m just glad Thor isn’t around right now, God knows how he would react.”

Darcy, wisely, said nothing. She’d learned a long time ago to dance carefully around the extended absences of her boss’s alien slash god slash super hunk boyfriend. The waterworks were never far behind when the ‘T’ word was mentioned. Fortunately, Jane had made recent headway in her research, and that had cheered her up enormously, much to Darcy’s relief.

On the news, a man with long hair, a metal arm, and empty eyes watched from a T.V. mounted on the far wall as Darcy created a tower made of empty battery cartons.

* * *

 

Considering she’d worked for a variety of super-secret agencies over the past five years (first S.H.I.E.L.D, then unofficially the Avengers), Darcy was honestly rather shocked she hadn’t been kidnapped sooner.

She’d finally managed to take a teensy-weensy vacation (Brisbane, beaches, hot dudes) from babysitting her lovelorn best friend who was buried so deep in Science! Darcy wasn’t sure she’d ever surface again, when apparently her karma caught up with her. She’d barely been in town for two hours when someone yanked her off the street and into a white utility truck. She got FroYo all over her favorite boots, which was just really not cool.

Before S.H.I.E.L.D.’s highly publicized and brutal (not to mention fiery) collapse, Darcy had undergone a few weeks of mandatory training.  She’d slept through at least half of it, but there had definitely been some key points about what to do if she ever found herself in a hostage situation. Something about not panicking and waiting for a rescue team. Considering S.H.I.E.L.D had gone tits up, she figured the chances of a rescue team were probably pretty slim, which undoubtedly made the whole ‘don’t panic’ thing null and void.  So as someone shoved her head into a sack and secured her hands behind her back, she screamed and thrashed like a mad woman, successfully kicking least two people before someone hit her in the temple. _Hard_.

She woke tied to a chair with a headache blooming like a mushroom cloud behind her left temple. Her mouth felt like the New Mexican desert had made a home inside it, and every bone in her body felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds each.

“Ah, you’re awake at last, good,” said a voice as slick as oil on water.

With a herculean effort, Darcy lifted her head, and a man with a face like cold marble smiled at her. The smile made her shudder.

He rose to his feet, and Darcy realized he was _massive_. Well over six foot with shoulders a mile wide and a bald head that gleamed almost blinding in the light of a single hanging bulb. He wore a fitted gray suit and smelled of expensive cologne. Darcy flinched back as his hand lifted to push a swatch of tangled, dirty hair from her face.

The man frowned at her for a moment before another smile split his features. Darcy had never seen colder, more emotionless eyes in her life. They were like shards of ice and steel.

“Well, you’re a pretty little thing aren’t you,” he observed casually and moved to a small table to pour a glass of water from a silver pitcher. The table, the chair she was tied to and the stool he’d risen from were the only objects in the dimly lit, freezing cold room.

The man held the glass of water to her lips, and Darcy hesitated, heart hammering in her chest. The man tsked lightly. “Come now, you must drink.”

Darcy took a tentative sip, briefly considering spitting it into the asshole’s face, but then biological necessity kicked in, and she drained the entire glass. Baldy smiled at her again, like she was a dog who’d just performed a trick.

“Who are you?” she rasped. “Where am I?”

Baldy set the water glass aside and perched once more on the stool. Darcy was absently surprised it didn’t shatter beneath his weight. The dude was a fucking _mountain_.

“We are somewhere secure and well off the Avenger’s radar, Miss Lewis, and I am either going to be a wonderful friend to you or… your very worst enemy.” His voice was clipped, precise, and very icy.

“Dramatic,” Darcy anointed as she attempted to stretch her legs against bindings that were definitely cutting off some circulation. Her arms ached and, what she assumed to be a zip tie, dug painfully into her wrists.

Baldy smirked and leaned forward, bracing massive forearms on his knees and clasping his hands together.

“Miss Lewis, I’ve brought you here in hopes you might be willing to help me.”

Darcy wet her lips and said with exaggerated patience, “Well, kidnapping someone and tying them to chairs isn’t a great way to convince people they should help you, big guy. Just a tip.”

Another sharp smile. “I don’t know, I have always found such tactics to be… very persuasive.”

Darcy’s stomach roiled and her ears buzzed. She’d never been so terrified in her life, and she’d been through two world catastrophes, complete with murderous aliens.  No one, aside from Becca Hamburg who’d once slapped her when Darcy had casually commented that she’d turned into a royal bitch since middle school, had ever intentionally hurt her before. She had a sickening feeling that that was quickly about to change.

“You should know that there have been numerous studies that prove torture doesn’t really work. People will pretty much say anything to you know, make people, uh, stop.” Darcy had a habit of rambling when she was nervous, which apparently transferred seamlessly to bone-chilling terror.

Baldy chuckled, and it was utterly humorless. “Well, they say old habits die hard… but I’m sure we won’t have to resort to such… _unfortunate_ measures, will we, Miss. Lewis?”

Darcy took a deep breath, bile hot at the back of her throat. “Listen, dude, I don’t know anything. I’m not a scientist. I’m not an Avenger or an agent or even a particularly good assistant. I make coffee, force scientists to sleep occasionally, and go on donut runs.”

Baldy didn’t seem to hear her, eyes locked on her face with a keen intent. “Let me tell you what _I’ve_ learned about you, Miss Lewis,” he began. “You were born in Ohio to a former heroin addict and put into the foster care system after your mother abandoned you at the hospital shortly after giving birth to you in an alley way. A few years later your mother died during a drug deal gone wrong; her body dredged out of a water tank in Las Vegas. They showed you the pictures when, at twenty-one, you went looking for her, you had to leave the room to vomit.”

Darcy’s fingernails dug into her palms so hard she was certain they broke skin. She’d never told anyone about that day in the Las Vegas police department. About how an unfeeling and uninterested officer had thrust an unsolved murder file under her nose and left her alone in a room that smelled of old coffee and cigarettes.  How she’d seen her features mirrored back to her in the bloated  face of a woman who’d life had hardly mattered to anyone, not even her daughter. Darcy had done more than just vomit. She’d cried in a bathroom stall for two hours before slinking away, questions unasked, files mostly unread, the image of her biological mother’s corpse burned onto the backs of her eyelids.

But Baldy wasn’t done yet. “You were adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Lewis of Connecticut when you were just shy of two years old. They were well-to-do middle-class, Jewish Democrats who treated you well and encouraged you to pursue your interests. You loved them very much. A few weeks after your high school graduation they died in an unfortunate car accident. They died instantly while you were at a local house party with your friends. How am I doing so far?” Darcy, whose entire body thrummed with fear, anger, and revulsion, said nothing, but the smallest whimper of protest slipped past tightly pressed lips.

Baldy continued, unperturbed. “You took a year off between high school and college, struggling with severe depression and working a variety of side jobs before eventually attending Culver University. You achieved high scores academically, but your professors frequently complained that you were not applying yourself properly. You changed your major four times before settling on Political Science though you showed a great deal of promise in biology and chemistry. You decided you wanted to be a lawyer, like your deceased, adopted father. It might interest you to know that your biological father was also a lawyer, one who paid your mother to fornicate with him in the back of his car on a business trip. He has a wife and three children and lives in California.” Darcy who knew nothing of her real father flinched as though he’d struck her.

Baldy could have been lying, of course, but she had a sense that a man like him wouldn’t bother. Why lie, she reasoned, when the truth frequently hurt so much more.

He shook his head with a bemused chuckle, as if reading her thoughts, and leaned back, surveying her with a critical eye. “During your senior year you took an internship mostly to escape a messy break-up with a former lover and to run away from your growing suspicion that law practice was not for you,” Baldy said, picking apart her life with the efficiency and ruthlessness of a finely sharpened scalpel. “A few months into your work with Dr. Foster, you happened upon the alien lifeform known as Thor, thus proving the existence of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge. Eventually, you completed your bachelor’s degree as well as your Master’s in Political Science. You trained briefly with S.H.I.E.L.D before it was revealed to be a covert Hydra operation and now work loosely with the Avengers organization. Despite several jobs offers with prominent political offices, and a distinct lack of expertise in the field of astrophysics, you continue to work for Doctor Foster, who is currently in a secret facility in Australia which, unfortunately, we are unable to breach at this time.”

Darcy felt tears sting at the corners of her eyes, and she valiantly fought to keep them at bay. The silence, expectant and heavy with promise, stretched for what felt like hours before Darcy finally forced herself to speak around numbed lips. “S-seems you know everything there is to know about me. I guess you can let me go now.”

Baldy sighed as if he regretted what he was about to say or do. “I’m afraid not, Miss Lewis. I related your history to you in order to make you understand how important your presence here is to me. You’ve been working alongside Doctor Foster for near on five years. She trusts you, relies on you, and as much as you seek to appear otherwise, you are no idiot. Jane Foster is on the brink of discovering a way in which to bridge the veil between worlds, and you are the key to my organization achieving such a thing first.”

Some part of her had always known a moment like this might come. And Baldy was right; Darcy wasn’t an idiot. Harebrained, a bit strange, rather impulsive, and highly opinionated, yes. But not stupid. A lot of the theoretical mumbo jumbo and math might have been beyond her, but she understood several key aspects of Jane’s research. Perhaps even enough to give the douche bag what he wanted.

“I probably won’t be able to help you,” she said, and it was possibly the truth. Understanding concepts, sure, relating to him all the intricacies, probably not.

Baldy frowned as if he were honestly sorry for her situation. “I hope, Miss Lewis, for your sake, that that is not the case.”

* * *

 

They eventually put her in a cell that had a metal bucket, a cot with no pillow and a thin blanket, no windows, and a single bulb that hung from a ten-foot high ceiling. The walls were made of stone, and it was bitterly cold.

Three times a day she was brought meals comprised of cornmeal, rice, and tasteless boiled chicken. Plastic water bottles were provided twice a day and removed as soon as they were emptied (along with her very sanitary and not at all dehumanizing “toilet”). The man who delivered such extravagant luxuries was unable to answer any of her questions as his mouth had been _literally_ sewn shut. His eyes, dark and heavily shadowed, were entirely lifeless. There was a long, livid scar across his throat.

Once, when she’d tried to rush past him through the door, he’d lashed out with inhuman speed and gripped her by the throat until her vision had gone almost entirely black. He’d left her on the floor, gasping and sobbing for breath, with her dinner placed, as always, near the left side of the door. She hadn’t tried to escape again.

How long she was kept in her cell before Baldy came to her again, Darcy wasn’t sure. A few days? A couple of weeks? Maybe a month? She didn’t know. Enough time for her to have several good cries, count all the stones in her cell – twice - and to curse every single decision that had led her to take an internship for a crazy astrophysicist.

“I thought you might appreciate a shower and a change of clothes, Miss Lewis,” Baldy said from the door, his shoulders so broad he barely fit within it.  He was alone, no guards trailing after him, but Darcy figured a guy like him didn’t need back up, not for someone like her at least. His fists were as big as Christmas hams, and Darcy had never been terribly athletic.

Darcy said nothing as she rose from her seat in one dark corner and he stepped aside to allow her through. She smelt awful, her hair was a gritty mess, and she’d never felt so disgusting in her entire life. Her pride wanted to tell him to shove a fire poker up his ass, but the sensible part of her was _dying_ for hot water and soap. Insults and baseless threats could wait until _after_ she’d washed her armpits.

The hall beyond her cell was disappointingly bare and gave her zero clues as to where the hell she was. The quality and relative dampness of the air (plus what she assumed was just a gut inclination all surface dwelling creatures possessed) made her think they were somewhere underground. Beyond that vague impression, she had nothing.

There were several other cells along the curving hall, all of them shut, and the only sound was her shuffling steps counterpointing Baldy’s sure, clipped strides. He wore another immaculately pressed and tailored suit and smelled of mint and sandalwood. Darcy had never hated another human so intensely in her life.

He said nothing and Darcy wasn't feeling terribly talkative as he led her town several more empty halls before finally holding open a door for her. Stitches was inside, along with a single, open shower stall,  a towel, and stack of what Darcy presumed were clothes.

Baldy gave her an apologetic smile as she eyed Stitches suspiciously. The strange man stood with his feet braced apart, hands clasped before him, and head bowed.

“I apologize,” Baldy said, actually seeming to mean it. “He will remain as a precaution. I assure you he is quite discreet and will not disturb you so long as you do not attempt to do something foolish.”

Darcy looked up at him and said, “Someone will come for me.”

His smile, as emotionless as ever, turned down slightly. “I rather doubt it, Miss Lewis.”

He was right of course. Who was she, in the grand scheme of things, but Jane’s eccentric and unqualified lab assistant?

Darcy said nothing more as Baldy pressed her lightly into the room and shut the door. Stitches didn’t move and neither did she for several long moments until the promise of being clean was finally too much. Watching Stitches the entire time, Darcy stripped, turned on the shower and stepped into blissfully hot water.

She took her time. Using a single bar of faintly scented soap to wash both her hair and body half a dozen times. It was nearly gone when she was finally done, and the water had gone tepid, her fingers pruny and her skin rather raw. Stitches never moved. Darcy dried herself with a towel that was more sandpaper than anything else and donned a pair of loose, white cotton pants with a matching top that was two sizes too large. Her bra was filthy, but she wasn’t about to go without it.

When she was done, Stitches lurched forward and opened the door, jerkily motioning her back into the corridor. Baldy was gone, and Stitches took her by the arm, fingers digging sharply into her bicep. Instead of leading her back toward her cell, however, he drug her further down the hall and up two flights of steps. She was winded halfway up the first one.

They emerged into the sort of pristine white hall Darcy was well accustomed to frequenting. Science was done here. Heart in her throat, Darcy planted her feet, but it didn’t slow Stitches down, he didn’t even look back at her. Darcy stumbled, finally caught her feet and found herself moments later in the sort of lab that would have made Jane moan with jealousy.

A pretty woman in a lab coat with platinum blonde hair and cheekbones that could cut diamonds turned toward them with a smile.

“You may let the poor thing go, Derik,” the woman said in a faintly British accent. Stitches released her arm, and Darcy’s fingertips throbbed as blood rushed back to them. _Derik_ , she considered vaguely. The name didn’t fit the dude at all.

“Wait outside, please,” the woman continued, and Darcy found herself standing alone, awkward and barefoot with her hair dripping on the linoleum (she’d forgotten her boots completely, and some distant part of her mourned their loss).

The woman surveyed her with no small amount of sympathy. “I am Dr. Angelica Thorn,” she said at last and motioned Darcy toward the back of the lab where two chairs and a small table waited. “Please, do sit.”

Mechanically, Darcy walked forward and sat. The lab was cold, and she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, the cold tiles biting at her toes.

Dr. Thorn sat with the prim elegance of a beautiful woman who was used to being observed and donned a pair of wire-rimmed glasses.

“My benefactor believes you might be able to help me with my research, Miss Lewis, or would you prefer I call you Darcy?”

Darcy narrowed her eyes. “I would prefer that you and your _benefactor_ let me go and then promptly go fuck yourselves” she snarled.

The other woman smiled tightly but seemed otherwise unruffled. “I’m afraid that is impossible at present, Miss Lewis, but I assure you that, if you are corporative, your stay here need not be uncomfortable.”

Darcy snorted. “Jesus, lady, what did you do? Memorize the evil scientist pamphlet on ‘How to Make Captives Trust You and Spill All Their Secrets’?”

The woman shook her head with a bemused huff as though Darcy were little more than an unruly child. “Please, Miss Lewis, I certainly don’t mean you any harm. In fact, I would very much like your help. The research I oversee here is deeply important, not only to my benefactor but to the _world_.”

“Oh _please_ ,” Darcy snapped, rolling her eyes and totally beyond caring. “Your work is probably like the Walmart brand of Jane’s research, which is why you douche bags need _me_ to try and fill in the fucking gaps, which I am almost positive I _can’t_.’” 

A brief flash of annoyance burned in Dr. Thorn’s eyes before another pleasant smile curled at the ends of carefully made-up lips.  Darcy had never had the urge to punch another woman so badly in her entire life. “Dr. Foster has made some wonderful strides, to be sure, but she lacks the right… _vision_ ,” Thorn said, a strange, fanatical gleam in her pale eyes. Before Darcy could come up with an adequately sarcastic remark to _that_ utter load of bullshit, the other woman drew a folder from a nearby table and said, “I merely wish to ask you a few questions, simple things that I am sure you can handle, and we’ll go from there, alright?”

“Sounds like a fucking blast,” Darcy gritted out, hair hanging in cold, slippery strands about her face.  Dr. Thorn winced a bit, as though offended by her use of foul language, which gave Darcy lots of satisfaction.

Dr. Thorn opened the folder and adjusted her glasses. “Excellent, well, let’s see. Can you tell me what it is you know about the Einstein-Rosen Bridge?”

Darcy rolled her eyes, arms crossed tightly over her breasts. “A wormhole, or Einstein-Rosen bridge,” she anointed in a voice dripping with scorn, “is a hypothetical topological feature that would fundamentally be a shortcut connecting two separate points in space-time.”

Dr. Thorn nodded, pleased. “Very good, Miss. Lewis.”

“Yeah, Wikipedia is pretty useful.”

This comment was met with a tight, unamused smile. “And what can you tell me about your experiences during the appearances of the alien life form in New Mexico? In as much detail as possible, please.”

Oh, she could give this bitch some details. Abso- _lute_ -ly.

“First of all, the ‘alien life form’ has a _name_. It’s Thor, and he’s literally the god of the Thunder. You know, the one from Norse mythology? And he could _demolish_ this place without breaking a sweat,” Darcy replied with exaggerated sweetness, trembling with building rage. Fuck these people. Fuck their evil master villain plans, and _fuck_ playing the frightened victim. “As it happens, the big guy’s actually pretty fond of me and as soon as he finds out that you’ve taken me, well, I’d hate to see what that gross pink lipstick would look like on your burned husk of a corpse. As for my _experiences_ in New Mexico, well, frankly, lady, you can suck a fat, veiny, hairy, donkey _dick_. How’s that for detail?”

Dr. Thorn studied her in silence for a long moment before sighing and shaking her head in disappointment. She snapped the folder closed and pressed some mysterious button under her chair.

Stitches swept into the room a second later and Darcy, wild with panic and a sudden flash of bravery, lurched to her feet and attempted to make a break for it. She didn’t get far. Stitches, eyes blank as always, snatched her up and wrapped his arms around her so hard her ribs creaked ominously, forcing the breath out of her. Darcy kicked feebly as Dr. Thorn clicked her tongue and retrieved a monstrous looking needle filled with some ominously blue liquid.

“I had really hoped you and I could be friends, Miss Lewis,” Dr. Thorn lamented sadly, the tip of the needle glinting in the fluorescent lab lights and Darcy couldn’t take her eyes from it. “I know Dr. Foster treats you like some airheaded ninny, but you and I, well you and I could have been partners-”

Darcy managed to draw her eyes away from the needle long enough to take aim and spit directly into Dr. Angelica Thorn’s open mouth.

The pretty woman gagged, retched, and nearly vomited before rallying herself and lurching toward Darcy with a feral little snarl. The needle went into the side of Darcy’s neck with a rather unnecessary amount of force, in her professional opinion. It also hurt like a _bitch_ as whatever was in it surged through her blood with the rapid beat of her heart.

The last conscious thought Darcy had before blackness, tinged in strange blue highlights, swallowed her whole, was that Dr. Thorn looked like an enraged toddler when she was angry and that her lipstick really was _terrible_.

* * *

 

This time, when Darcy woke, she was strapped to some kind of hospital bed with a bright, terrible light hanging above her that possessed all the intensity of a tiny sun. She felt weird and floaty, as if her mind wasn’t entirely contained within her body, or as if she were trapped in some bizarre place between dreams and waking. A nightmare, maybe.

Figures moved at the edges of her vision. Monsters, villains, memories. Voices, indistinct and muted, as if she were several feet underwater, invaded her pounding head as someone leaned over her.

The eyes, pale and framed by perfectly manicured brows, were vaguely familiar. They contained a fair amount of sick enjoyment as Darcy pulled feebly at her restraints. Another face, unfamiliar but no less terrible, joined the first.

“..Another dose… this time… yes, that should do…”

“…die… careful… still can’t get at her…”

“Necessary sacrifice… everything she knows…finally…”

A sharp pinch in her left arm, cold metal sliding through flesh, and Darcy whimpered and twisted pathetically. The faces watched her, gleaming with clinical and detached interest.

Pain, burning and molten, slammed into her with all the force of an asteroid. Her body arched off the bed, spine throbbing and snapping, but the sensation was drowned out by the pure lava that sped through her veins, racing toward her heart like a bullet train. Screams tore their way up her throat and out of her wide open mouth as her vision wavered and cracked, chasing some semblance of reality. It was like a kaleidoscope had exploded behind her eyes, bright and dreadful as it dug tiny shards of colorful glass into her eye sockets.

Her life quite literally began to flash before her eyes. She saw herself, two years old, cradled in Lori Lewis’s arms, fussing a little, and clinging to a ratty old blanket that she’d found much later after her parents were dead and she’d gone looking through the boxes in the attic.  An invisible observer swept the vision aside in annoyance.

Darcy’s first birthday with her new parents, _swipe_. Darcy’s first kiss with John Weston down the street at twelve years old, _swipe_. The first time she’d had sex with John, the awkwardness and dull memory of pain and discomfort new and fresh and real, _swipe_. Debbie Mathers graduation bash, Darcy taking her first sip of alcohol, unaware that her mother was taking her last breath, body broken and crumpled in a ditch a mere six miles away as Darcy imagined how great her life was going to be, _swipe_.

 On and on it went, shuffling through her life with vivid, terrible, invasive clarity. She could feel someone or something watching, observing, analyzing each private moment, laying her entirely bare. This was the true meaning of vulnerability. Of powerlessness.

Finally, the roller-coaster eased to a stall, slowing and watching the first time she’d met Jane with sincere interest. Carefully observing her experiences with the wacky physicist as they played out like a movie, detailing their ordeal with Thor, his weird friends, and the killer robot with laser eyes, well, _eye_. It sped on through their adventures in London, narrowing and observing a few key moments as Darcy lay helpless, the burning never ceasing, never easing, tearing through her at what had to be a molecular level.

She began to lose all sense of herself, as though she were little more than a pulsing, tortured nerve. Finally, the girl named Darcy Lewis evaporated in an ocean of flames.

A new scene blossomed and came into focus. The Observer was intrigued.

_“Oh my God,” a slight woman with brown hair murmured breathily. The only other occupant in the room full of beeping machinery was a curvy woman with dark hair who didn’t look up from the small screen encased between her hands._

_“Oh my God,” the first female repeated and suddenly lurched upright, scrambling toward her uninterested companion who made a wordless noise of protest when the screen was snatched from her hands._

_“I figured it out!”_

_The second woman, younger, with thick eye makeup and red painted lips, made a grab for the stolen device, apparently uninterested. Instead, her hand was snatched, and she was dragged across the laboratory toward a large computer screen. Her groan was long and loud, her features petulant._

_“I created my own anomaly,” the smaller woman said in a remarkably high-pitched voice as if her excitement were contained in a teapot that was about to boil over. She pressed her companion toward the screen, where a complicated series of figures raced._

_“Don’t you see,” she said, clapping her hands together. “The-“_

**“** STOP **,”** a voice boomed through the vision like a pulse wave, creating ripples that disrupted the scene, marring and distorting it. “STOP **!”** it bellowed again. Something thrashed wildly in protest, creating cracks and fissures.

The Observer was angry, furious, and vengeful. But they had gone beyond pain, beyond feeling, beyond the fabric of human identity.  Darkness, cold and terrible, beckoned.

Some small sense of self-returned, some hidden presence buried within stirred. A presence so deep it lived on the brink of madness and death. It awakened, it rebelled, it resisted. It was _angry_.

* * *

 

The darkness receded slowly, and Darcy coughed, rolled over and opened her eyes to what appeared to be the apocalypse. The world around her was burning, a charred, black and ruined husk. The sky was remarkably high above her, though she’d always been terrible at judging distances (thirty feet? Three hundred? Three thousand? Eh, whatever). The stars wavered uncertainly through steady streams of smoke, the moon little more than a sliver of white against the rise of what could only really be referred to as a crater. Glancing about her, Darcy observed the hint of rooms and infrastructure that were represented by smoke stained hunks of concrete and bent, melting bars of steel. Basically, nothing about her situation made any sense what so ever.

_A mouth sewed shut. A shiny bald head. Pink lipstick and a thick needle._

Darcy shivered as a frigid wind tore across the wreckage, quickly replaced by the heat of nearby fires, and she realized, belatedly, that she was totally and completely naked. Soot marred her pale skin, and her left arm bore a tattoo of vivid blue lines, pale toward her hand and growing brighter toward her shoulder, that looked eerily like veins, which was just entirely too weird for her to deal with at that precise moment.

Memories, indistinct and terrible, pulled at the fringes of her mind as she pulled herself uncertainly to her feet. A choice which she regretted pretty much immediately as every single nerve in her body protested. Stumbling, gasping, and nearly tripping over a still smoldering human (presumably) body, she came to a sudden, petrified halt. A lifeless eyeball bubbled and popped wetly.

Darcy's subsequent scream echoed rather impressively through the giant molten hole in the ground as she fell to her knees and puked spectacularly all over the still smoldering corpse, which was how Captain America found her -naked, sobbing, and splattered with bits of her own vomit. Classy. He wasn't wearing his customary star-spangled tight pants and his infamous shield of patriotic justice was also conspicuously missing, but his was not the sort of face a girl could forget.

This time, she noted, he totally didn’t check out her tits.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Made some belated adjustments to this chapter. I realized, for instance, that post-Civil War Steve no longer had his shield and he probably wasn't trekking about in his super-suit of patrioticness. Or at least I decided he wouldn't be because my Steve is going to be going through some serious angst, yo. Appreciate all the feedback, ya'll amazing.


	2. Step Two: Take a Moment to Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy didn’t realize she’d slumped into Steve’s chest until he swept her up into his arms, which would have been amazing if she wasn’t fairly sure she was having a legit mental break down. The impressions grew stronger, invading her senses and making it tough to focus on anything at all --like the fact that there was at least a sixty percent chance her va-jay-jay was hanging out the bottom of her newly acquired coat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve is real moody and angsty, bear with me, it's intentional. Thank you all so much for the feedback for the first chapter, ya'll are lovely. Mwah!

* * *

 

Steve seemed just as surprised to see her as Darcy was to see him and for several long moments they just stared at each other. Darcy at his jawline, because it was even more impressive than she remembered, and he at her super weird arm which she was still attempting to ignore. Frankly, she wasn’t entirely certain she wasn’t hallucinating. Darcy had imagined, on multiple occasions, Captain America busting down the door of her cell and heroically rescuing her. Though, to be fair, she’d pretty much imagined every superhero-rescuing combination on the planet (or galaxy).

The spell broke when another gust of wind reminded Darcy of just how much clothing she was _not_ wearing, resulting in an epic shiver complete with chattering teeth. Steve jerkily unzipped his parka and stepped forward to throw it around her shoulders. The thick black thermal he wore beneath really accentuated his frankly astonishing shoulder to waist ratio, she noted, because Darcy may have been confused and terrified but she sure as hell wasn’t _dead_.

He stood very close to her, attempting to zip up the jacket that hit her about mid-thigh, while not actually looking at her, and Darcy _felt_ things. Things that she couldn’t explain. Emotional impressions that pushed and prodded at her. She could distinguish confusion, concern, irritation, and something… deeper, something shrouded in darkness, something bitter and terribly, terribly sad.

Darcy didn’t realize she’d slumped into Steve’s chest until he swept her up into his arms, which would have been amazing if she wasn’t fairly sure she was having a legit mental break down. The impressions grew stronger, invading her senses and making it tough to focus on anything at all --like the fact that there was at least a sixty percent chance her va-jay-jay was hanging out the bottom of her newly acquired coat.

“…gonna be alright, ma’am… get you out of here,” Steve said as she blinked owlishly up at him. He sounded as if he were shouting at her from a very great distance. Concern was practically _radiating_ off the dude, and it was physically warm, seeping past her skin and easing some of her distress.

Jesus, what the hell was _wrong_ with her?

A very fancy and high-tech looking jet landed moments later amidst the burning rubble and two faintly familiar people rushed out to meet them. The woman Darcy recognized from sporadic news coverage and shaky YouTube videos as Natasha Romanov, aka the Black Widow. But the dude dressed in dark leather with a literal _bow_ slung across his back she’d met before.

“ _You_ ,” Darcy accused from within the cradle of Steve’s arms, jabbing a finger at him. Robin Hood’s brows rose in surprise. “You stole my iPod, you dick.”

* * *

  
Steve carried her onto the jet as Darcy looked over his shoulder. The loading door began to close, and she could just make out a figure through the smoke.

A figure that was as naked as she with his mouth stitched shut and a weird little tube protruding from his stomach (that answered a few questions). He watched her with his fists clenched at his sides and his eyes, previously so emotionless and cold, were bright and fixated intensely on her. Something passed between them. A whisper of something deeper, something she couldn’t quite make sense of. A memory or some vague intuition that was just barely out of reach.

The door closed, and Darcy said nothing, too stunned and confused to do more than stare. When she peered out a window within the jet as her rescuers prepared to take off, Stitches was gone. Something like regret clenched in her gut.

* * *

After giving her a weird jumpsuit to wiggle into (it only barely contained her breasts), they situated her on a cot in some sort of sick bay, and Darcy promptly fell into a deep, troubled sleep before they could start asking her questions. Waking up in a crater naked could really take it out of a girl. Not to mention the fact that the weird emotional impressions she’d gotten from Steve had multiplied times ten with the appearance of Natasha and Mr. iPod Stealer. It was incredibly overwhelming.

Sleeping seemed like a better idea than trying to piece together whatever the hell had happened to her.

Scenes of lives that weren’t hers played on a reel in her mind: A young girl with red hair dancing in a ballet troupe; a boy flying through the air, reaching for a swinging bar as the crowd below held its breath; a young man staring out across the Hudson River, hands shoved in his pockets and his slim shoulders hunched against a cold gust of wind. There was something forlorn and rather wistful about him.

Darcy woke suddenly, jarred from the odd visions with the abruptness of being splashed with ice water, and immediately realized why. Someone in a lab coat held her weirdly tattooed arm out at an angle and was seconds away from jabbing a needle into her. Darcy’s reaction was immediate and uncontrollable, driven by sheer and primal terror.

The poor man let out a terrified screech as she snatched his wrist and jerked his hand away from her. She couldn’t breathe, a terrible weight compressing her chest and squashing her lungs.

_Needles slipped past bruised skin. She knew the pain would begin again, and she sobbed weakly. Not for the first time, she wished for death. A man hovered above her, unflinching and uncaring as the fire sparked beneath her flesh and began to consume. This time, she couldn’t even scream before she was dragged into the abyss. In one corner, Stitches watched._

Other memories, one’s that didn’t belong to her, filtered in.

_A woman wearing a soft smile hummed over a pot on the stove. Racing through a corn field, laughing and chasing, a dog barked in the distance and overhead the sky was bright and clear. A boy in a football uniform nervous and uncertain as he dipped his head in for a kiss in a darkened corner of the locker room. A hospital room filled with students and a lone patient, unconscious and pale, the woman, was dying, there was nothing any of them could do-_

“Darcy, let him go,” a calm, clear voice broke through the strange visions as Darcy blinked back tears. She was gasping and sobbing, the man’s wrist still clutched in her hand, but the needle was long gone. She felt like a raw, exposed nerve, vibrating with remembered pain and terror

Natasha and Steve were in the room, looking wary and uncertain. Steve had his hand on his gun as if preparing for some sort of threat. It took Darcy a moment to realize that she was the threat. Natasha, however, had her hands raised and stretched out toward Darcy in the universal sign of surrender and passivity. More, she could feel waves of compassion rolling off the other woman, compassion and a deep understanding of what it was Darcy might have gone through.

_Flashes of rooms painted red, of girls screaming down the corridors, of tinkling piano keys and notes that jarred._

“Shhh, Darcy, it’s alright, just breathe,” Natasha cooed, her voice steady and calm. “In and out, yes, that’s it. In and out, good, good.”

Tears burned as they tracked down her cheeks and slowly Darcy released her grip on the man’s wrist. He didn’t step away from her as she expected he would, however, and she looked up to find that his eyes had taken on a glassy, distant quality.

“Dr. Jones,” Natasha said, gripping the man by the shoulder, “you should step away, give her some air.” He didn’t move, and the other woman frowned. Steve looked equally unsure.

Darcy, feeling sick inside, mentally willed the man to step away from her, and he took first one step then another before standing at perfect attention. Somewhere inside her mind was a spark, a connection that was within her yet apart, something that connected she and the poor doctor in a way she couldn’t describe.

“Oh god,” she croaked. “What have I done?!” she demanded of the room, panic clawing its way up her throat again. “What did they do to me?!”

But no one could answer her, and Steve’s eyes, blue as desert skies in the summer, were hard and damning. Darcy could all but taste his condemnation on her tongue, and she wrapped her arms around her knees and began to sob in earnest.

* * *

  
They arrived in Wakanda, of all places, some time later.

Darcy honestly had no idea how long exactly as she’d drifted in and out of sleep during the entire flight with Natasha hovering nearby more for precaution than comfort. She’d dreamed of young girls with guns and blood on their hands, and it really hadn’t done anything for her nerves.

Meanwhile poor Dr. Jones’s had sat strapped into a chair, unmoving.

They landed outside a vast, very expensive facility that could probably give Stark Tower a run for its money. Darcy had to mentally urge the poor Doctor off the jet as they disembarked, who then followed her like some weird pet as she was ushered into a nearby building. Steve Rogers barely glanced her way, but his jaw was tight, and disapproval and distrust hung in a thick haze about him.

Several guards, armed and frowning, fell into line as Darcy was escorted into what was clearly something of a medical bay. Her feet grew roots as soon as they were beyond the sliding doors, she couldn’t help it.

Natasha was there, understanding. “They need to inspect you for injuries… take a few blood samples, probably run some tests.”

Darcy’s mouth had gone completely dry, and she could feel herself trembling. “I-I can’t.”

Steve looked dour indeed as he said, “Running tests is the first step to understanding what it is you did to Dr. Jones.” He was far less understanding and empathetic, but he was right.

Darcy swallowed and tried to pull herself together. Frankly, she felt her composure was hanging by a fraying thread. “A-alright.”

The other woman gave her an encouraging smile, and they stepped into a room full of doctors. Darcy couldn’t stop shaking, overwhelmed by flashes of memories and the sudden stream of emotions bombarding her.

She cowered near the door, Dr. Jones hovering a bare foot away, and clamped her hands over her ears. “Make it stop,” she begged. “Please make it stop.”

“Make what stop?” asked one of the doctors, all of which looked unsettled.

“I can _feel_ what all of _you_ are feeling and I can’t-I can’t deal with it!” she said, tears blurring her vision. God, she’d never been much for crying but apparently her little stint in the clutches of evil villains had knocked her completely out of whack.

Steve frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Darcy snapped, long past her breaking point, “That I can tell you don’t trust me, that you think I’m dangerous and that-“ she paused and sort of mentally _reached_ out toward him in a way she somehow knew that she _could_ , “Th-that you’re angry, angry that he wanted to go back, wanted to sleep and hide instead of staying with you. Angry that you were so cl-close to having part of your old life back, and it’s gone again.” She cut off her hurried speech at the look of pure shock and distress on Steve’s face. The rest of the room was dead silent.

“Send for Wanda,” Natasha said calmly to one of the guards and then added, after a moment of thought, “and Dr. Foster.”

* * *

  
They left her in the exam room, alone, with two armed guards flanking the sliding glass door. She’d had to verbally instruct Dr. Jones to follow Natasha and to obey her instructions, even though it had made her want to vomit. Repeatedly.

The lack of people and their jumbled thoughts and emotions was like finally being able to turn off an endless and deafening movie she didn’t like. The guards outside only presented a minor tickling at the edges of her consciousness, which made it relatively easy to ignore. She basked in the silence.

Steve hadn’t even spared her so much as a backward glance before stomping out of the room, something that still irked her. Darcy was by no means an expert on Captain America, though she’d learned plenty about his exploits in school, something definitely seemed off about the dude. She was having a hard time reconciling the blushing, unfailingly polite man she’d met, however briefly, with the snappish, grumpy version she’d been dealing with.

More pressing, however, was the sneaking suspicion that she may or may not have picked up some kind of super power. No big deal or anything.

The door slid open, and a flurry of messy brown hair and loose plaid slammed into her. Darcy grunted, someone else’s relief and guilt and worry choking her for a moment as Jane began to cry messily into Darcy’s hair.

“Go-good to see you too, boss,” Darcy finally managed, patting Jane on the head.

“It’s all my fault!” Jane sobbed, thin shoulders shaking.

“Hey now, of course it isn’t. Unless you’re the one who threw me in the back of a van, which frankly smelled of rat piss, and whisked me off to –well, I’m not really sure-“

“Antarctica,” Jane interrupted miserably.

“Holy shit,” Darcy marveled. “Really?”

Jane pulled back and sniffed, somehow still beautiful with snot running from her nose and red eyes puffy from crying.

“Really, really.”

Darcy whistled. She’d assumed nothing else could surprise her. She had assumed wrong.

Something darkened Jane’s emotional “cloud” (she really didn’t know how else to describe it) and her eyes dipped away.

“What is it?”

Jane hesitated, chewing on her lip for a moment. “They, ah, told me what happened with Dr. Jones, and the Captain.”

Darcy winced and rubbed at her left hand. The weird metallic-blue tattoos were faint so far down her arm, hardly visible but for a soft sheen when she turned her palm a certain way. Christ, her life had gone from weird to royally _fucked_.

“I-I don’t know what happened. I panicked and I.” She drew in a sharp breath, refusing to cry again. “God, Jane. I feel like I’m losing my fucking mind.”

Jane took her by the shoulders. “Hey, listen to me okay, Darce,” she said, affection and determination physically warm against Darcy’s skin and it drove away some of the dark hopelessness in her mind, “we are going to figure out what those bastards did to you, okay?”

Darcy sniffled pathetically. “Promise?”

Jane smiled and pulled her into a tight hug. “Promise.”

The door opened again and Darcy, aware that she was being a childish coward, burrowed deeper into Jane’s shoulder and braced herself for… nothing. She felt absolutely nothing.

She pulled away with surprise and met the equally surprised gaze of a young woman with reddish hair and artfully smudged black eyeliner.

“H-hello, Darcy,” the woman said with a hint of a vaguely Romanian accent. “My name is Wanda Maximoff. The Captain believes I may be able to help you.”

Darcy offered her best attempt at a smile and said, “God, I sure hope so.”

The woman –more of a girl really, though something in her eyes made her appear much older—smiled uncertainly.

“I-“ Wanda began and then seemed to reconsider. “I cannot read you at all; it is very strange.”

Darcy knew immediately what she meant. “Yeah, I get a sense of… well, something¸ it’s really hard to describe, from everyone _but_ you.”

Wanda nodded, stepping closer to her, and lifted a hand near Darcy’s face. She tensed.

“Would it be alright if I tried something?” Wanda asked, and Darcy hesitated.

“I-well, whatever is going on I can’t control it very well,” she admitted. “I don’t want to do to you what I did to Dr. Jones.”

Wanda shook her head slightly. “Do not worry; I have a suspicion that my powers will not work on you, and yours will not work on me.”

Darcy swallowed and nodded jerkily. “Alright, just, don’t fry what’s left of my brain if you can help it.”

Jane rolled her eyes, and Wanda placed cool fingers on either of Darcy’s temples, letting her eyes slip shut. Darcy felt the faintest tickle of something at the fringes of her mind, a gentle, feather light prod that was gone a moment later.

Wanda pulled away, amazed. “Nothing. Nothing at all. How strange.”

“Yay?”

Wanda shook her head, frowning in thought. “My abilities are… complex and difficult to explain. I can alter reality in subtle ways, influence and sense possible outcomes… like mind reading but not. With you I see… nothing.”

None of that made much sense to Darcy who said, “Uh, that’s cool.”

“This will require further consideration; I may not be quite as helpful as I had hoped,” Wanda announced.

Darcy sighed.

* * *

  
The next four hours were some of the worst of Darcy’s life. And that included her time spent in a frozen cell with literal super villains. Whatever her mysterious captors had done to her had had some seriously intense consequences as far as her subconscious was concerned. Darcy couldn’t be within three feet of a needle without shaking like a goddamned Chihuahua

Jane patted her head as blood sample, after tissue sample, after _more_ blood samples were taken. Wanda stayed too, observing, but also offering words of comfort between each test. Neither she nor Jane delved too deeply into questioning Darcy about her experiences, though she could practically taste Jane’s desperation for answers. Both of them found the sight of Darcy’s left arm very unsettling.

Everyone was very kind and patient. The fact that she could read their emotions, which were generally a mix between concerned and curious, made the whole ordeal a bit easier. Recalling vividly what had happened with Dr. Jones, Darcy made sure not to touch anyone, clenching the arms of her exam chair so hard her fingers ached.

Eventually, she was allowed to take a shower, complete with actual shampoo and conditioner, which was basically heaven on earth. As she stood beneath the spray of a very fancy water head, she felt as though her body was a foreign object, and for the first time, she realized how much weight she’d lost.

Darcy had never been described as _skinny_. Curvy, when people we’re trying to be nice and chubby when they weren’t. Her stomach and thighs were definitely smaller, and her breasts (easily her best and most infuriating feature) were less full. Droplets of hot water cascaded down her arm, and she traced the strange patterns, unable to help herself. They were actually kind of pretty, in a creepy oh-my-god-what-the-fuck-happened-to-me kind of way. The patterns were beneath the skin, not like a tattoo after all, and seemed to correspond with her actual veins, which was just super fucking unsettling. There was a faint humming sensation as she brushed her fingers along them.

Eventually, when the water had started to go cold, she dried off and put on a warm, clean pair of sweats with one of Jane’s favorite band t-shirts and a plain zip-up hoodie. Even such a small thing as a ratty old t-shirt made Darcy feel about three hundred times better.

Dressed, she stared at herself in the foggy bathroom mirror, damp hair hanging long and stringy down her back and her skin pale, making her eyes large and oddly luminous. Though she couldn’t be entirely certain, she could almost swear her eyes were bluer than they once had been. Christ, there was only so much more weirdness she could take.

Wanda was waiting for her outside the quasi-hotel room she’d been allowed to use, leaning against the wall and staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran parallel. Jane had gone off to observe the results of Darcy’s tests, promising to return as soon as possible, which was actually kind of comforting. A guard waited down the brightly lit hallway, a gun at his hip and his hands clasped before him. He wore a uniform she didn’t recognize, but it looked distinctly militaristic.

“The others are waiting for you,” Wanda said gently, pushing away from the wall. “They have many questions.”

Darcy nodded, the bottom dropping out of her stomach. She’d know she’d have to do this eventually. It was pretty much standard kidnap and rescue procedure, but her palms started to sweat immediately and she really just wanted a cheeseburger and her favorite throw blanket to wrap herself up in.

“It will be alright,” Wanda said kindly and moved away from the wall to put an arm around her awkwardly enough that Darcy got the impression that she didn’t ‘do’ physical contact very often.

Darcy tried for a smile and Wanda guided her down the hall. She found, as they walked, that she could sense people throughout the building. Sort of feel them through the walls and doors, though the strength of these impressions seemed to depend heavily on distance. Ugh, so weird.

“Your… _gifts_ are different than mine, I think,” Wanda said as she, Darcy, and their very solemn looking guard shuffled into an elevator. “Different but similar in some ways. I can understand what you mean by impressions. Are they loud in your mind? Distracting?”

Darcy wrapped her arms around herself and responded slowly as the elevator slid smoothly upward. “Not loud, exactly. Definitely distracting, though. Feelings aren’t usually loud though… they’re the current beneath the noise, I guess. I can pick up other things, sometimes, but it’s sporadic. Like snapshots or movie clips.”

Wanda considered this in silence for a long moment. One side of the elevator was glass and a large compound spread out below them, giving way to a broad swath of tree line with the tell-tell haze of a city beyond.

“It was hard to manage my gifts, at first. Very hard,” Wanda murmured, looking down at worn leather boots. “But time and practice and patience will make things better.”

Darcy pulled a wane smile. “I’d rather it just went away, to be entirely honest.

Wanda’s smile mirrored hers. “I have frequently wished the same. Sometimes we can’t choose our gifts or talents; we can only choose how to use them.”

The elevator stopped, and the doors opened before Darcy could formulate any sort of response, but the words resonated inside her.

A man in an elegant black suit and an easy smile waited for them. A tall, beautiful woman stood behind him in a slinky black dress with golden accents, the sunlight gleaming off her dark skin. Her hair was shaved close to her scalp, and she wore large, golden earrings and was easily one of the most imposing women Darcy had ever seen. Her stance and movements reminded her of Natasha –meaning the woman _reeked_ of ass-kicking ability.

“Darcy,” Wanda said, “May I introduce T’Challa, King of Wakanda.”

Darcy, whose closest brush with real life royalty had come during her infamous trip to London with Jane when they’d stood outside of Buckingham Palace, gaped.

T’Challa’s smile was charming. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Darcy Lewis, and welcome to my home.” Curiosity and kindness radiated from him, but as always, other emotions rippled beneath. Insecurity a mile wide, uncertainty, stress, and something darker… a man in a black suit, with claws that dripped with blood, an anguished cry.

Darcy shook her head, driving the images away, and made a weird curtsy head bow that almost made her topple over. “Er, thank you, your highness? Majesty?”

T’Challa chuckled and motioned her forward down the finely decorated hall. “Please, you may call me by my given name, I have never been one for formalities. Much to Nakia’s annoyance.” He nodded his head toward the woman following after him with all the grace of a stalking feline. Her smile was both exasperated and affectionate. She wore devotion and confidence like a perfume, but Darcy didn’t need her gifts to know that much. The secrets were there again, but deeper, harder to fetter out, but Darcy had bigger things to worry about.

A guard opened a door, and Darcy stepped uncertainly into a large conference room where half the world’s most infamous heroes awaited her. Talk about pressure. _You once tased a god_ , Darcy reminded herself and squared her shoulders, _you can handle this shit._

Jane was there, seated beside a man Darcy didn’t know who was nursing a cup of coffee like it might save his life, and another guy she recognized as the Falcon from news footage. Jane gave Darcy an encouraging smile, a mound of paperwork in front of her. iPod Stealer and Natasha sat side by side, each of whom offered her a small smile. Steve sat at the back, dressed in a fitted blue shirt and jeans, his face unreadable.

Their emotions bombarded her the moment she stepped into the room, though they were difficult to distinguish from one another, and she took a deep breath to help her focus past them –it was getting a bit easier.

“Please,” T’Challa said kindly, “Take a seat Miss Lewis.”

Darcy sat, and Wanda remained nearby. T’Challa sat to one side, the picture of casual observation with his beautiful shadow stationed beside him. Three guards with guns hovered near the door, and Darcy had the sneaking suspicion that they were there for her.

“Uh, hey everyone, thanks for uh, saving me and stuff,” she said eloquently after no one spoke for an awkwardly long amount of time. Steve’s eyes narrowed perceptively.

* * *

“Woah, woah, back up,” Darcy said, interrupting the world-famous assassin midsentence. “ _What_ did you just say?”

The corners of Natasha’s mouth turned down slightly. “I said we’ve been looking for you for over five months-“

“Nope,” Darcy said with perfect certainty, despite what her new-found “gift” was telling her (that Natasha was being entirely honest). “There’s absolutely no way. I mean I was kept in that cell for a while, don’t get me wrong, it was boring as hell, and the toilet system is something I would very much like to forget, but there is no way I was there for five months.”

They’d talked for what felt like hours already, Darcy telling them what she remembered haltingly and uncertainly, while they badgered her with questions while offering her very little information in turn. Basically, she’d had more than enough tor a twenty-four hour(ish) period.

Natasha hesitated, flicking a glance down the table toward Steve who had his arms crossed over his chest and wore a rather stony expression. The other woman was considering whether or not to lie to her.

Darcy, who was, once again, totally over her situation at that moment, called her out on it. “Listen, I don’t really understand what the hell is happening to me, or how the hell I’m doing it, but I’ll be able to tell if you’re lying to me, so just… don’t, alright?”

Something like discomfort flashed in Natasha’s eyes before calm confidence took its place. The lady was one cool cucumber that was for damn sure.

“We have been actively looking for you five months, Miss –Darcy, but prior to that, Dr. Foster attempted to work through the Avenger’s initiative. Ultimately, those who now oversee the organization determined that they would be unable to help.”

Darcy felt cold, her hands going clammy. “H-how long was I gone?”

“Nearly nine months.”

Darcy leaned back slowly in her chair, utterly stunned.

 _Nine months?!_ Surely that was impossible. She remembered the cell, her delightful visit with Dr. Thorn, and then waking up strapped to a bed before being pumped full of something that had been beyond merely painful. Then she’d awoken naked, in a crater. God, she needed a drink, or a thousand. Waves of sympathy rolled across the room, and she felt almost embarrassed. Why the hell couldn’t she remember?!

“It felt like weeks… maybe a month and a half at the most,” Darcy murmured, hardly aware she spoke. Jane, who had come around to offer a show of support and comfort, reached out to touch her, and Darcy flinched away.

“Don’t,” she said harshly, “I don’t want to hurt you.” Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, still not entirely able to believe what was clearly the truth. She flat out refused to cry in front of arguably the world’s toughest people, however.

Jane’s guilt and shimmering anger curled hot and acidic in Darcy’s mouth as her friend began to speak. “We think you may have undergone some sort of memory wipe. There is evidence of trauma in your brain scans, which, frankly were alarming for a number of reasons.”

Darcy braced herself, wrapping her arms tightly around her middle. Jane turned to address the rest of the room and brandished a remote that turned on a display projected from the center of the table. A 3D representation of a brain appeared parts of which pulsed with illumination, points of light racing like fireflies along synapses.

“This is a normal person’s brain function,” Jane said. Darcy knew that of course --she really had been good at biology once upon a time. The image changed, and the brain was now far more active, areas deep within sparkling like firecrackers.

“This is Darcy’s brain scan, which as you can see, is far more active.”

Turned out that staring at one’s brain was kind of uncomfortable. Having a room of people staring at one’s brain was borderline horrifying, Darcy concluded.

“Which means what, exactly, Dr. Foster?” Steve asked, speaking for the first time since Darcy had entered the room.

Jane sighed. “It’s hard to say. We use so little of our brains, and Darcy seems to be using far more of hers than well, either the doctors on staff here or I have ever seen –save for, well, one other person.” Everyone looked at Wanda, whose mouth thinned but didn’t react otherwise.

“What’s more,” Jane continued, “is that, like Wanda, Darcy carries traces of whatever energy was contained in Loki’s scepter. It’s possible that the fluid they injected Darcy with was some type of synthesized chemical that they derived from whatever was powering that staff. They may have used that chemical as some sort of truth serum or mind control to extract information from her. There's a chance Darcy's abilities may be the unintended consequence of that serum. ”

This speech was greeted with solemnity and contemplation. The dude with the coffee was looking at her like he wanted to give her a hug or something and iPod Stealer was looking at her with newfound interest. 

Darcy groaned and braced her head in her hands. “I am _so_ fucked.”


End file.
